KeithE wrote:What’s wrong with both addressing future needless deaths while offering thoughts and prayers for the still struggling wounded and the still hurting family/friends of those killed. That truly honors (in two ways) those affected in the present situation.

If you truly cared about the dead, caused in part by easy access to rapid-fire gunnery, you would demand effective gun laws that would help lessen the extent of future mayhem.

You're the guy who started this topic on Monday without a paragraph, a word, a syllable that offered thoughts and prayers. One can speculate as to the reasons for that fact. Why then, do you brazenly lecture others about "truly" caring? I'd call it hypocrisy but the better culprit is tone deafness and poor instincts.

I wouldn't care, we all fall short of the glory of God, if it ever occurred to you, for example, that your first paragraph above would be more appropriate if you did a little self examination and the second would be much stronger if you stopped the reflexive moralizing and virtue signaling about who "truly cared" about the dead.

The compassion for the dead is missing when they are callously dismissed by "in our thoughts and prayers" without any consideration of who they were, what they did, how their families are affected, or any show of any kind of interest other than moving on after saying something nice about thoughts and prayers. That's just code language for "we don't want to talk about it now, because people's emotions might lead to some real compassion that would generate action which would upset our political agenda. So let's wait until things pipe down, and the victims can just be nameless and faceless numbers to have any meaningful discussion on resolving the problem."

Such an argument is sheer and blatant hypocrisy. I didn't see this kind of "respect for the dead," or a "waiting period" for discussion of the politics surrounding mass shootings after the incidents in Paris or London. The outcry and political discussion happened before the bodies were taken to the morgue. If this guy had been a Syrian refugee who hollered "allah akbar" before opening fire, you can bet the political discussion, and actions, would be immediate and severe, without a shred of concern or regard for the "respect for the dead."

Seeing politicians like Mitch McConnell standing around with their hands in their pockets, giving flimsy excuses for not engaging in a political discussion while the emotion of an event like this runs high just tells any potential Islamic terrorist (or North Korean dictator for that matter) that gathering these kinds of weapons, and launching this kind of attack might be a whole lot easier than hijacking planes to fly into skyscrapers, or trying to figure out how to get a nuclear warhead onto a missile that would reach the US.

KeithE wrote:What’s wrong with both addressing future needless deaths while offering thoughts and prayers for the still struggling wounded and the still hurting family/friends of those killed. That truly honors (in two ways) those affected in the present situation.

If you truly cared about the dead, caused in part by easy access to rapid-fire gunnery, you would demand effective gun laws that would help lessen the extent of future mayhem.

You're the guy who started this topic on Monday without a paragraph, a word, a syllable that offered thoughts and prayers. One can speculate as to the reasons for that fact. Why then, do you brazenly lecture others about "truly" caring? I'd call it hypocrisy but the better culprit is tone deafness and poor instincts.

I wouldn't care, we all fall short of the glory of God, if it ever occurred to you, for example, that your first paragraph above would be more appropriate if you did a little self examination and the second would be much stronger if you stopped the reflexive moralizing and virtue signaling about who "truly cared" about the dead.

You judge my pushback to be hostility. Nothing of the sort.

You are partially right. My thoughts were with those who were shot and gratitude that my son-in-law Chris was not at that country songfest (he works for Luke Bryan and his bus was in an accident early Sunday morning returning to Nashville from Iowa, but he as not hurt). But, I do not recall offering prayer for those Las Vegas victims, just that Chris return soon. Prayers are one thing but actions also speak - I ended up driving Brandy and kids to Franklin, TN so they could go on a family vacation as planned early this fall break week. I have also contributed a sum of money to Harvey, then Irma and Puerto Rico victims but have not volunteered to go there and have prayed for all of those affected most every dinner prayer. I’ll expand those prayers.

I can take your continued “moralizing” about my prayer life; frankly I need that. Prayer to me is aligning my own will to God’s will and not so much asking for God’s intervention to help others (although that is good also and I believe that God listens and just may act, but I do not presume He will). I believe God's will is that all killings end and He desires us to participate to the end (thus my calls for gun control).

If my “moralizing" pricks you, you might want to re-evaluate.

But your claim of not being “hostile” is nonsense, when you speak of me as being:"Tone deaf” , "Left the Planet”, and "ding dong, bat guano crazy”.

That is hostility, bro. Close to being malicious towards a fellow BL contributor.

You do not have to answer any of my questions. Let me say this... There are reasons I do not answer questions about the UAE. Mostly because I do not know and refuse to say anything false or disrespectful about the country which welcomes me.

I have said, prior to your question that I was going to ask some of my members about their native lands and cultures. Please understand, when we get together once a week, I am not thinking about the conversations on this forum.

New gun laws will not stop the madness because we cannot legislate morality.

None of the things you want to see as law will not stop the madness. The use of burglaries is poor. In the comparison, the burglary would match the murder. The tools used to break in or is used to commit the crime would match the gun.

KeithE wrote:What’s wrong with both addressing future needless deaths while offering thoughts and prayers for the still struggling wounded and the still hurting family/friends of those killed. That truly honors (in two ways) those affected in the present situation.

If you truly cared about the dead, caused in part by easy access to rapid-fire gunnery, you would demand effective gun laws that would help lessen the extent of future mayhem.

You're the guy who started this topic on Monday without a paragraph, a word, a syllable that offered thoughts and prayers. One can speculate as to the reasons for that fact. Why then, do you brazenly lecture others about "truly" caring? I'd call it hypocrisy but the better culprit is tone deafness and poor instincts.

I wouldn't care, we all fall short of the glory of God, if it ever occurred to you, for example, that your first paragraph above would be more appropriate if you did a little self examination and the second would be much stronger if you stopped the reflexive moralizing and virtue signaling about who "truly cared" about the dead.

You judge my pushback to be hostility. Nothing of the sort.

You are partially right. My thoughts were with those who were shot and gratitude that my son-in-law Chris was not at that country songfest (he works for Luke Bryan and his bus was in an accident early Sunday morning returning to Nashville from Iowa, but he as not hurt). But, I do not recall offering prayer for those Las Vegas victims, just that Chris return soon. Prayers are one thing but actions also speak - I ended up driving Brandy and kids to Franklin, TN so they could go on a family vacation as planned early this fall break week. I have also contributed a sum of money to Harvey, then Irma and Puerto Rico victims but have not volunteered to go there and have prayed for all of those affected most every dinner prayer. I’ll expand those prayers.

I can take your continued “moralizing” about my prayer life; frankly I need that. Prayer to me is aligning my own will to God’s will and not so much asking for God’s intervention to help others (although that is good also and I believe that God listens and just may act, but I do not presume He will). I believe God's will is that all killings end and He desires us to participate to the end (thus my calls for gun control).

If my “moralizing" pricks you, you might want to re-evaluate.

But your claim of not being “hostile” is nonsense, when you speak of me as being:"Tone deaf” , "Left the Planet”, and "ding dong, bat guano crazy”.

That is hostility, bro. Close to being malicious towards a fellow BL contributor.

Keith, I know you are a great guy, generous and caring. I just wish you had better instincts that showed it in a way that didn't convey to others their moral inferiority. No need to get in a snit about it and go to the forum rules. We know each other here well enough to know the flaws we all have. If I'm not hostile it can't be hostility. Your brilliance doesn't include knowing my state of mind or emotions. The closest you can come is to tell me you read it as hostile. I informed you otherwise.

Gotta run. There's a telephone pole outside my house that wants a conversation.

William Thornton wrote:Keith, I know you are a great guy, generous and caring. I just wish you had better instincts that showed it in a way that didn't convey to others their moral inferiority. No need to get in a snit about it and go to the forum rules. We know each other here well enough to know the flaws we all have. If I'm not hostile it can't be hostility. Your brilliance doesn't include knowing my state of mind or emotions. The closest you can come is to tell me you read it as hostile. I informed you otherwise.

Gotta run. There's a telephone pole outside my house that wants a conversation.

You explicitly say I had not had "thoughts or prayers” about the Las Vegas victims (assuming you know my mind and what I pray). You were partly right.

When you feel pricked by my talking about some social justice issue or environmental concern in the country (not explicitly charging you with anything, usually), you say I am moralizing.

Again cut the "Tone deaf” , "Left the Planet”, and "ding dong, bat guano crazy” language aimed at me or anyone, please. They are poor substitutes for good argumentation.

It is true that laws will not legislate away any behavior. But just because they do not do so perfectly, does not mean we should not have that law on the books to limit that behavior (particularly when there are victims involved).

Gun laws will not eliminate murder, but properly stated and executed they are likely to limit mass murder in occurrence or in magnitude of the carnage. It is past time we try that as a nation and maybe we can stop having the highest death by gun rates among the “high income” countries of the world. This says we had 10.2 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2010.

Wikipedia gives stats on the incidence of “intentional murders” by country and we rank 126th out 216 countries in terms of having the lowest “international murders per 100,000”. The US had 4.88 per 100,000 “intentional murders” in 2015.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rateMany low income counties have higher intentional murder rates - like El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, Brazil, Nigeria, Russia, and South Africa (if that be a low income country)

Well, looking at Keith's chart, and following some of the reasoning in this discussion, we can conclude that virtually every country on that list is more moral than the United States.

We keep hearing the same arguments.

1. The liberals just want to take guns away from law abiding citizens, and when that happens, only the criminals will have them. 2. The laws you propose wouldn't have stopped this shooter. 3. You can't stop people from doing this if they want to, so why bother?

So, there are some answers.

1. There's not a single piece of proposed legislation related to gun control that would take guns away from law abiding citizens. All of the proposed legislation is aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of those who intend to use them to do harm. There are examples in dozens of countries that show such laws to be successful, and times in the US when the same kinds of laws have done the same. 2. Assault weapons bans, extended background checks, limits on how many weapons one person can own, all would have prevented this guy from having what he did. Basically, he brought an arsenal of weapons into two hotels, including one in Downtown Las Vegas a week earlier where there was another music festival, set up a barricaded nest, and killed or injured over 500 people. How that happened without detection is a question that needs to be answered. This guy basically showed any middle eastern terrorist group how easy it was. 3. You can't stop them all, but it seems that there might at least be some effort to make vulnerable targets, schools for example, safer. It's hard to take pro-life advocates seriously when they're not willing to lift a finger to protect the kids who have been born while they're attending class.

KeithE wrote:It is true that laws will not legislate away any behavior. But just because they do not do so perfectly, does not mean we should not have that law on the books to limit that behavior (particularly when there are victims involved).

If the US passed all the laws you listed earlier and then some which did not remove the 2nd Amendment would the killings in Vegas not have occurred? Would such laws stop people like the evil man who committed the crime? Would the grandmother who cannot afford extra fees, licenses... be equipped to stop the thugs who break into her house - now - knows she has no weapon.

What do you do with all the unregistered guns in the country? What do you do when you find someone with an unregistered gun?

Let's face it... most gun control laws hurt those who are law-abiding citizens who simply want to protect themselves.

Do we outlaw fertilizer since MvVey used it to build his bomb and it's been reported this man in Vegas had the chemicals also?

Where does it end... not only with making laws but making sure such a crime will not happen?

1. There's not a single piece of proposed legislation related to gun control that would take guns away from law abiding citizens. With in the idea of taking away is also the concern that you are taking away the opportunity for the lower income family to purchase one due to higher costs and the like. All of the proposed legislation is aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of those who intend to use them to do harm. There are many people in the USA who have many guns who will not cause harm to others unless provoked and fair cause is given.There are examples in dozens of countries that show such laws to be successful, and times in the US when the same kinds of laws have done the same. Other countries are not the USA. Their size / scope / freedoms / lifestyles differ.2. Assault weapons bans, extended background checks, limits on how many weapons one person can own, all would have prevented this guy from having what he did. So you want to take away the right of a man to collect weapons / enjoy target shooting / big game hunting... all because one evil man? Is that how the USA is to work? Basically, he brought an arsenal of weapons into two hotels, including one in Downtown Las Vegas a week earlier where there was another music festival, set up a barricaded nest, and killed or injured over 500 people.Isn't that more of a security problem in the hotel? How that happened without detection is a question that needs to be answered. This guy basically showed any middle eastern terrorist group how easy it was. 3. You can't stop them all, but it seems that there might at least be some effort to make vulnerable targets, schools for example, safer. It's hard to take pro-life advocates seriously when they're not willing to lift a finger to protect the kids who have been born while they're attending class.Legislating does not end evil.

The left is not interested in protecting others. That is why sanctuary cities will not work with the feds to keep criminals off the streets.

KeithE wrote:It is true that laws will not legislate away any behavior. But just because they do not do so perfectly, does not mean we should not have that law on the books to limit that behavior (particularly when there are victims involved).

If the US passed all the laws you listed earlier and then some which did not remove the 2nd Amendment would the killings in Vegas not have occurred? Would such laws stop people like the evil man who committed the crime? Would the grandmother who cannot afford extra fees, licenses... be equipped to stop the thugs who break into her house - now - knows she has no weapon.

What do you do with all the unregistered guns in the country? What do you do when you find someone with an unregistered gun?

Let's face it... most gun control laws hurt those who are law-abiding citizens who simply want to protect themselves.

Do we outlaw fertilizer since MvVey used it to build his bomb and it's been reported this man in Vegas had the chemicals also?

Where does it end... not only with making laws but making sure such a crime will not happen?

The sort of gun control I was advocating was given previously here and I'll repeat below:

Here are three areas of gun law that should be improved with legislation.

1) Registration - universal registration of every firearm in all states and those firearms coming into our country. And enhanced assessment of the current holdings by any individual and confiscation of excess gun holdings - still allowing a few pieces for legitimate self-protection and hunting. Paddock would have been identified and dealt with before even arriving at Las Vegas. Cross check registration against mental illness registries.

2) Eliminate rapid-fire guns - all automatic, semi-automatic guns and add-ons to enhance rapid-fire would not be allowed except for SWAT teams. Paddock would only have been able to pick off a few people. It would also give an advantage to police teams over criminals with guns.

3) Large venue checks - as with airports checks, we could have security guards pay extra surveillance whenever large crowds gather (ball games/concerts/political gatherings and high rises near these events). Dogs could sniff for explosives and ammunition (I’m not sure about that). Mandalay Bay could have checked baggage (including those golf bags). This could lead to more jobs. We certainly created more jobs with TSA airport screeners in response to 9/11, but we are ignoring the much more deadly internal death threat due to easy access to guns.

I’m no expert on guns or gun control. Fining tuning of these laws could be made by more knowledgable people and refined with implementation experience. No law will ever be perfect but we as a nation have what I thought was a shared goal - to “form a more prefect union” (Source: Preamble to the Constitution).

I’m not suggesting to limit a small number of guns for individuals for self-protection/hunting/target practice. Just (1) better registration and assessment of person buying the guns (as to number of previous purchases and mental conditions), (2) ban rapid-fire guns except for SWAT teams/military, and (3) better checks at large audience venues.

Fertilizer control is a difficult one, but that is no reason to not enact reasonable gun controls.

The arsenal that Paddock collected had nothing to do with a collection, big game hunting, etc. and laws aren't because of one evil man. The scope of those who have used assault weapons is far more than just "one evil man." That's a laughable argument. It was clear, from the type of weapons he "collected," and the modifications he purchased for them, that the only "big game" he was after were human beings. Individual rights in this country are balanced by law, and as the availability of weapons capable of murdering large numbers of people in a short amoung of time increases, the government's obligation to protect its citizens outweights an individual's desire to own automatic weapons or "collect" an arsenal.

I've not seen a single proposal that would take away the opportunity for a lower income family to purchase, due to higher costs, etc. Guns aren't terribly expensive as it is, the profit margins are pretty high. If there's a genuine concern that lower income people won't be able to own a few, for their own protection, or for their big game hunting excursions, maybe a few gun owners would be unselfish enough to make the prices a little lower.

Sanctuary cities have nothing to do with this issue. It's a matter of will, and of belief in the sanctity of human life. That's only a convenient line for political purposes. If it really was a conviction and a belief, the value of the lives of those who have been victims of mass shooting and gun violence would matter to conservatives. Obviously, what matters more to conservatives is the availability of cheap firearms, and the rights of an individual to modify semi-automatic weapons in order to commit mass murder.

The leadership of the NRA is the Face of Evil in America today in network with the cabal Hillary Clinton explained On NPR Fresh Air Monday a week ago. Easy Googles both for those who really want to know the Truth.

Read framed by Marilyn Robinson's essay Memory in the Givenness of Things at your Local Barnes and Noble.

Deeper, more substantive than the pontifications ofand Trey Gowdy and Bammer senator Richard Shelby, a LEGEND of the Nick Saban University.

The leadership of the NRA is the Face of Evil in America today in network with the cabal Hillary Clinton explained On NPR Fresh Air Monday a week ago. Easy Googles both for those who really want to know the Truth.

Read framed by Marilyn Robinson's essay Memory in the Givenness of Things at your Local Barnes and Noble.

Deeper, more substantive than the pontifications ofand Trey Gowdy and Bammer senator Richard Shelby, a LEGEND of the Nick Saban University.

Gorsuch is a Tool of the NRA

Astounding!!! You actually believe that Hillary Clinton can enunciate a truth? Egad! The only cabal she might explain is Bubba/Lynch/Comey; otherwise, her hide would already have been fried, as Mammy Yokum might have it.

The leadership of the NRA is the Face of Evil in America today in network with the cabal Hillary Clinton explained On NPR Fresh Air Monday a week ago. Easy Googles both for those who really want to know the Truth.

1) "Fresh Air" on NPR? Baloney cheese. The notion that there's any "truth" to be found in the voices of that lame media outlet is nonsense. There's nothing "fresh" about NPR's "Fresh Air." It's stale radical liberal political propaganda.

2) The leadership of the NRA is the "Face of Evil in America today?" Hogwash. Balderdash. The face of evil is the liberal lunatics who rush to politicize every mass murder event that comes down the pike. There isn't a single law that could have prevented the mass killing in Las Vegas. The liberals could pass 600 laws in one fell swoop and not one of them would have prevented what Stephen Paddock did.

3) The hypocrisy of the liberal Democrats is astonishing. While it's a grim fact the murder toll in Las Vegas (59 dead) on Sunday makes it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, it doesn't begin to compare to what happens regularly in Chicago. The gun-hating liberal media is eerily and hypocritically silent about reporting the of murders in the Windy City. Chicago, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, saw 84 murders in the month of June of this year. There were 76 murders in July, 50 murders in August, and 59 murders in September. So far in Chicago, just this year with 3 months yet to go, there have been 519 murders. In 2015, 2,988 people were victims of gun violence, according to records kept by The Chicago Tribune. That number soared in 2016. There were 4,368 shooting victims last year. In July of this year, there 115 people shot in the city — in a single week. And since Emanuel was elected in 2011, the murder rate has risen. In 2012: 509 murdered; in 2013 that dropped to 442 murdered; in 2014, that rose slightly to 428 murdered; then in 2015, jumped to 495 murdered; and in 2016, the murder rate soared to 751. The city is on pace for about 700 murders again this year. (Source...)

4) Based on the data in the previous paragraph, there have been 3,144 murders in Chicago over the past six years. These murders occurred in a city that has some of the strictest gun laws in America. Piling more restrictive gun laws on top of already restrictive gun laws is obviously ineffective. Blaming the NRA for the murders in Chicago is ridiculous.

Read framed by Marilyn Robinson's essay Memory in the Givenness of Things at your Local Barnes and Noble.

Deeper, more substantive than the pontifications ofand Trey Gowdy and Bammer senator Richard Shelby, a LEGEND of the Nick Saban University.

Hard to tell in that post, David, what's yours. I'm guessing the color distinguishes your words, and maybe its my screen, but it took a while to figure out.

If you're interested in providing any kind of citation of facts at all to prove your assertions, it would make for interesting reading. Otherwise, to coin a phrase that's popular here, and one which I like, your rant is baloney cheese.

The Daily Wire, by the way, has been provably wrong in its assertions since it's been published, so is not a credible source.

Sandy wrote:Hard to tell in that post, David, what's yours. I'm guessing the color distinguishes your words, and maybe its my screen, but it took a while to figure out.

If you're interested in providing any kind of citation of facts at all to prove your assertions, it would make for interesting reading. Otherwise, to coin a phrase that's popular here, and one which I like, your rant is baloney cheese.

The Daily Wire, by the way, has been provably wrong in its assertions since it's been published, so is not a credible source.

Chicago gets the attention, for political reasons, but the Daily Wire deliberately skews dates and percentages to make it look worse than it is, and their numbers don't match up with the FBI or local police information. They rank eighth out of large US cities in the murder rate, and looking at all of that data, it is hard to see what that proves, other than the need for gun control.

David Flick wrote: Based on the data in the previous paragraph, there have been 3,144 murders in Chicago over the past six years. These murders occurred in a city that has some of the strictest gun laws in America.

Actually, the most restrictive gun laws in America are in Massachusetts, and in the city of Boston, where the murder and gun crime rate is a fraction of what it is in places that don't have that kind of legislation and, as you can see from this article, enforcement of the law, that being the real key to the effectiveness of gun laws.